The present invention relates generally to file editors, and more particularly to a file editor in which the file format or the file content is generally unknown.
When the contents of a file need to be accessed, reported and even modified, a software developer may often be required to spend a minimum of a day or more to write, test, and implement a software tool for that purpose. In many instances, either the software developer does not have the time to spend answering the request, or the timeliness of the response is critical.
While editors for editing binary data exist, they are awkward to use and require the user to know where the data resides to edit this binary data. Furthermore, these editors do not work with different file types, e.g., program files and non-binary data files. Therefore, a different editor would be required if a user desired to edit several different types of files.
The present invention is directed to the problem of developing a universal software tool that enables a software developer to quickly access the contents of a file, whether the file contains data, text or programs, to edit the file and to display the contents of the file in any format that is convenient to the user. The present invention is also directed to the problem of developing such an editor that works with all structures of files, and file formats for each system.